Friday, February 8, 2013

Bragging points to differ

Sen.
Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is going to get his own Latino “first” next week – he’ll
be the first Latino Republican to ever give the official “response” to a presidential
State of the Union address.

RUBIO: Listening to his madre

And
he’ll be the first to do it in both English y Español.

THAT’S
SOMETHING THE Republican partisans want to boast about these days – they want
it known that they know how to include Latinos amongst their ranks.

Even
to find someone who’s willing to say that President Barack Obama got it all
wrong in setting priorities for the nation in his State of the Union address,
scheduled for Tuesday.

Somehow,
I wonder if they’re willing to boast as much about the other report that has
Rubio in the news these days.

For
it seems he spoke with Time magazine, and even played them a recording of a
voice mail message his mother left him – one that can be interpreted as telling
him to not take such a hard line against immigration reform such as many of his
GOP colleagues have taken in recent years and might very well prefer to
continue taking if it were totally up to them.

BUT
IT ISN’T. The Latino population is growing. And it is interpreting the hostile
GOP rhetoric on immigration reform as being hostile toward Latinos in general.

Her
explanation, according to the senator, is a realization that the immigrants are
just as legitimate human beings as anyone else living in this country these
days. “They’re human beings just like us, and they came for the same reasons we
came. To work. To improve their lives. So please, don’t mess with them.”

Words
of advice from a mother, who probably knows other ways of persuading her son.

RUBIO
IS AMONG the members of Congress currently working on crafting an immigration
reform policy that might actually get support beyond the progressive end of the
Democratic caucus.

Which
is probably more significant than the partisan duty he will do on Tuesday in
criticizing (in a polite way) the comments of Obama in his official address. Because
a sensible immigration policy could go a long way toward eliminating the
bureaucratic mess we now have, while also easing tensions caused in other
areas.

Perhaps
we should be thankful for Rubio’s Cuban immigrant mother (she came to the
United States a couple of years before the rise of Fidel Castro caused the
beginning of the Miami exile community).

Her
bit of sense may have a longer-lasting impact upon us all than anything Rubio
says Tuesday about Obama.

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I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., and for a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.